Bill Simpson Self Destructs

There’s an old joke about a guy who puts a
gun to his head. A bystander sees this and begins laughing. Enraged, the suicide
yells out to the bystander, "Don’t laugh, because you’re next!"

This may be the best analogy to describe
the self-destruction of Bill Simpson. Resigning from the Simpson Safety Products
company to which he gave so many years, Simpson cites being "worn out"
by the controversy over Dale Earnhardt’s death. "I just don’t want to deal
with it anymore."

Simpson’s 30 years in the racing safety
business are nicely summarized by Jack Arute at ESPN’s racing website. Arute
notes the famous incident where Simpson set himself on fire to demonstrate the
effectiveness of his Nomex fire suits, his financial help to Andy Hillenberg to
run the 2000 Indianapolis 500, and so on.

"But since February" Simpson
claims he has been scapegoated by NASCAR because of the issue over belt breakage
in Dale Earnhardt’s car – "They’ve ruined my career. They’ve ruined my
reputation."

Arute writes, "Despite repeated
attempts to engage NASCAR in a meaningful dialogue regarding what role any of
his products played in Earnhardt’s death, Simpson has been left to twist in the
wind while NASCAR continues its ‘investigation.’"

Now, it would seem that the only attempts
on Bill Simpson’s part were less to engage in meaningful dialogue than to
pompously explode that NASCAR was "out to get me." When Mike Harmon’s
belt tore at Nashville, Simpson exploded that it could not have happened. And
when Tom Propst came out with his now-discredited story, Simpson confidently
asserted, "I believed from the first moment that there was never a broken
seat belt."

But then he flatly contradicted himself in
Liz Chandler’s May 3 examination of the issue – Simspon acknowledged that a few
days after the Daytona 500 he saw the broken belt and examined the car, and
concluded the belt wasn’t installed properly, an assertion contradicted by
Richard Childress’ team.

Simpson also acknowledged his first
reaction to the Earnhardt tragedy was to explode at Billy France over the phone
and "I told him they were killing people…..’You killed Superman.’"
This, of course, is untrue – NASCAR didn’t kill Superman or anyone else. Yet
Simpson finds it awful that NASCAR has supposedly ruined him when by his own
account of the chronology he instigated the war of words with NASCAR to begin
with.

Adding to the pomposity of Simpson’s
running tantrum were his quasi-unannounced appearance in early May at NASCAR HQ
to see sanctioning body brass – this after they’d been told by Simpson’s lawyer
not to see him without lawyers present – and his bold assertion of the existence
of a videotape supposedly proving that Daytona EMTs cut Earnhardt’s belt rather
than that it broke in impact – he has not discussed this alleged tape ever
since, and his silence suggests yet another hoax in the repellent nitpickery
that is the Earnhardt story.

And one strains in vain to find any
indication that NASCAR did anything wrong – nowhere in its February announcement
of the belt breakage did it mention anything about Simpson or about any kind of
defect in his products; it simply stated that the belt separated and that it was
possible (though they never put any finality there at the time) that belt
breakage played a role in Earnhardt’s death. WE of course keep hearing about how
Dr. Barry Myers’ April report stated that belt breakage did not contribute to
his death and that it came by a basilar skull fracture caused by forward head whip
– a conclusion disputed by other forensic experts and implausible on its face
given the nature of Earnhardt’s overall injuries, injuries indicating impact,
not head whip, was the cause of his death.

"That was (Simpson’s) story and amid
recanted stories from safety workers and medical personnel associated with the
Earnhardt crash, Simpson has stood by his statement," Jack Arute writes.
Now, what is Jack talking about in terms of recanted stories from safety workers
and medical personnel? The only story that has come out in that area was Tom
Propst’s now-discredited assertion that the belt was intact when he arrived at
the car. Patti Dobler became involved in the story with the claim that she knew
the truth of the matter and was not allowed to discuss it – a day before she was
freely discussing it on TV. And little attention has been paid to the follow-up
– her statement that she now understands how the belt did in fact break after
seeing sled test crashes showing belt breakage on several occasions.

Bill Simpson deserves no sympathy over the
way he ended his career in the racing safety business. He began this career as
an innovative path breaker in racing safety – and he ends it a pompous old man
denying anything can go wrong with his products.